Interviews

Note: This is an excerpt of my interview with Shane Parrish that was originally published in the December 2017 issue of Value Investing Almanack (VIA). To read the entire interview and more such interviews and other deep thoughts on value investing, business analysis and behavioral finance, click here to subscribe to VIA.

Shane Parrish is the curator behind Farnam Street, a website aimed at mastering the best of what other people have already figured out. Shane is the founding partner of Syrus Partners, a holding company that acquires and operates businesses in North America. Before Syrus, Shane worked as an executive in the Canadian government, where he led the creation and execution of key cyber-defense initiatives.

This isn’t your typical value investing interview, but one around topics of reading, learning, and multidisciplinary thinking.

Over to Shane!

Safal Niveshak (SN): Please share about your background. What led you to the wonderful work you are doing at Farnam Street today?

Shane Parrish (SP): I started working for an intelligence agency on Aug 27, 2001. Two weeks later the world changed forever, and I was thrust into a leadership role — not because of any competence on my part but rather because of necessity. As the promotions kept coming, I realized that I was increasingly making decisions that impacted not only my team and their families but also the organization and people around the world. The problem was, I had no idea “how to make decisions.”

My first response to this was to look around the organization and study how most successful people made decisions. This was a great inside view. To complement that I wanted to get an outside view, so I decided to get an MBA.

Note: This interview with Kenneth Jeffrey Marshall was originally published in the November 2017 issue of our premium newsletter – Value Investing Almanack (VIA). To read more such interviews and other deep thoughts on value investing, business analysis and behavioral finance, click here to subscribe to VIA.

Kenneth Jeffrey Marshall is an American value investor, teacher, and author. He teaches value investing in the masters in finance program at the Stockholm School of Economics in Sweden, and at Stanford University. He also teaches asset management in the MBA program at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of the 2017 bestselling book Good Stocks Cheap: Value Investing with Confidence for a Lifetime of Stock Market Outperformance published by McGraw-Hill. He holds a BA in Economics, International Area Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles; and an MBA from Harvard University. He splits his time between California and Sweden.

Safal Niveshak (SN): Thanks for doing this interview, Kenneth! Please tell us a little about your background and journey, and how you got into value investing?

Kenneth Marshall (KM): Well, I was first shown value investing in the late 1980’s. But it wasn’t like some sudden enlightenment. It actually took me a decade to get it. I’d rather not think about the cost of that delay.

I was on ET Now yesterday to share my thoughts on investing in 2017 and 2018. While I managed to duck their questions on specific stocks, you can see the nervousness on my face even when I talk about a few old names. 🙂

Here is the video of the chat (click here if you are not able to watch the video below) –

Here are some notes from my talk that I prepared just to make the task a bit easier for you –

I recently had the opportunity to get interviewed by Paisa Vaisa, an audio show/podcast based on topics around money, investing, and personal finance.

In the interview, I discuss my background, what got me to the stock market, thoughts on value investing, buying and selling stocks, core rules of personal finance, and my way of living a prosperous life without the paycheque.

I thought you might be interested in hearing me out (my kids did, for the first time). 😉

Note: This interview was originally published in the April 2017 issue of our premium newsletter – Value Investing Almanack (VIA). To read more such interviews and other deep thoughts on value investing, business analysis and behavioral finance, click here to subscribe to VIA.

I sincerely believe in what Charlie Munger often says about envy, that it is a really stupid sin because it’s the only one you could never possibly have any fun at. I am lucky to have stayed away from this sin as far as investing and other aspects of life are concerned.

But if there is one, and just one, person who arouses this sin in me every time I read him is…Morgan Housel. And it’s for the simplicity of his thoughts that he puts across through his powerful writings. I have tried to emulate Morgan several times in my writing endeavor, but he raises the bar each time he publishes something new, more simple yet more powerful.

Morgan’s posts at The Collaborative Fund, where he is currently a partner, have been a great source of learning for me. I have also read him for years at his earlier stints at The Motley Fool and The Wall Street Journal.

Morgan is a two-time winner of the Best in Business award from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers and a two-time finalist for the Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism. He was selected by the Columbia Journalism Review for the Best Business Writing 2012 anthology. In 2013, he was a finalist for the Scripps Howard Award.

In this interview, Morgan shared with me his simple investing thought process, what gets most people into trouble in investing, and the people who have inspired him the most in his journey.